Mostly Meatless Italian Recipes from the Culinary Institute of America by Ruth Paget
One of my treasured cookbooks is the Culinary Institute of America Cookbook for the home cook with over 375 recipes. The recipes represent the best multicultural recipes of New York and the Northeastern United States with many of Italian origin.
I recently re-read this cookbook with any eye towards mostly meatless recipes to prepare for the 21st century with its issues of greater food insecurity even in the United States. I looked for recipes that I could build meals around that did not sacrifice protein, calcium, and iron despite greater vegetable intake.
I chose four sample mostly meatless recipes that are Italian, because I love Italian food. These recipes include:
-lobster and prosciutto crostini
Basically, a crostini hors d’oeuvres is a toasted baguette slice with a somewhat luxurious topping.
In this recipe, the toasted crostini slice is spread with garlic butter and then goat cheese. A prosciutto slice is place on top of the goat cheese and thawed, cooked lobster goes on top of the crostini. For garnish, you place a sautéed sage leaf on top of the lobster.
This lobster and prosciutto crostini would pair well with chardonnay wine or champagne. On the West Coast, you could replace lobster with Dungeness, if you cannot procure frozen, cooked lobster.
-cannellini bean purée
I consider cannellini bean purée to be an Italian version of hummus. You can spread it on toast rounds as a crostini or use it as a dip for vegetables.
The ingredient list for this recipe seems long, but most of the herbs called for will be tied in a cheese cloth that boils with the beans to season them. The cheese cloth and herbs are removed before puréeing the beans.
Olive oil, lemon juice, and hot pepper sauce are mixed into the beans before serving.
This bean spread on a crostini would look good with sautéed sage leaves on top.
-Panzanella – toasted bread and tomato salad
Panzanella salad makes great use of hard, artisanal bread made without preservatives, usually called day old. There are three uses for this type of bread:
-cut it into large, rectangular slices to dunk into soup
-toast cubes of it to use like a crouton in Caesar salad
-toast cubes of it and add tomato cubes and vinaigrette to it to make panzanella salad. (Slices of red onion go well with this salad, too.)
-Spring Greens and Cannellini Bean Gratin
For this recipe, you can use canned cannellini beans. To begin, you sauté the beans with tomatoes and vegetable broth. Then, you sauté Swiss chard or collard greens. The beans and greens are then mixed together in a baking dish with breadcrumbs placed on top before baking. (I like to add grated Parmesan cheese to the gratin for extra flavor.)
There are many more mostly meatless recipes in The Culinary Institute of America Cookbook as well as pantry lists for setting up a European pantry focusing on ingredients for French, Italian, and Portuguese cuisine. This cookbook contains much knowledge that is still useful for 21st century concerns.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
